Birthday profile

Colin Rowe

Colin Rowe, English-American architect, theorist and academic (died 1999)

Born
March 27, 1920
Died
November 5, 1999
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1920

About Colin Rowe

Colin Rowe was a British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician and teacher. He is acknowledged to have been a major theoretical and critical influence in the second half of the twentieth century on world architecture and urbanism. During his life he taught briefly at the University of Texas at Austin and, for one year, at the University of Cambridge in England. For most of his life he was a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Many of Rowe’s students became important architects and extended his influence throughout the architecture and planning professions. In 1995 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects, its highest honor. He was also awarded the Athena Medal from the Congress for the New Urbanism posthumously in 2011. One of the first letters from Rowe published in The Letters of Colin Rowe: Five Decades of Correspondence was written from his hospital bed to his friend and colleague at the University Ursula Mercer. Colin won a scholarship to the local Grammar School and later attended the University of Liverpool to study architecture.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Colin Rowe timeline

  1. In 1995 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects, its highest honor.
  2. He was also awarded the Athena Medal from the Congress for the New Urbanism posthumously in 2011.

The world when Colin Rowe was born

Colin Rowe was born in 1920. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1920

  • #1 song"Swanee" – Al Jolson
  • Top movieThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • Best-selling bookThe Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBabe Ruth sold to the New York Yankees
  • Top headlineWomen win the right to vote with the 19th Amendment
  • Technology milestoneFirst commercial radio broadcasts
  • Defining fadFlappers and the Jazz Age
  • Notable inventionBand-Aid adhesive bandages
  • World population1.86 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • Sports championCleveland Indians (World Series)
  • U.S. population106.0M

1920 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Colin Rowe's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19202026
Gas$0.30$3.45/gal
Average home$6,296$435,000
Average income$3,269$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population106.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.